


Scars

by sunshyndaisies (writergirlie)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-19
Updated: 2010-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/sunshyndaisies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron has collected a lot of scars in his life, both before and after he became an Auror. Hermione reflects on the dangerous life her husband has led.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

My husband likes to tell me that scars are like badges of honour.

 

This didn’t sit too well with me, of course, the first time he told me this, when he had come home to me battered and bruised, with a deep gash running the length of his jaw that was barely closed with clumsy magic. He had been all of nineteen then, newly accepted into the Auror Academy and full of the kind of bravado only boys that age could possibly have, the kind that would lead him to sneak along on a mission that no first-year trainee had any business being in.

 

His devil-may-care attitude towards scars still makes me uneasy to this day. Even more so, actually, after  a decade of marriage and two children who all think the world of their father and would be as lost as I would be if anything ever happened to him. It never fails, though. Whenever he comes home with a new “badge of honour” (after first trying anything and everything to stop me discovering it), he always resorts to humour to assuage my shock and panic. Nothing a lame joke couldn’t cure--that’s his philosophy--and even though the last thing I want to do is laugh, I can’t help but let a smile escape me anyway. That’s just my husband’s own unique brand of magic.

 

Ron wasn’t always this way, though. The summer after fifth year, when a rare heat wave swept through London over the course of several uncomfortable, sticky days, we all dug our lightest fare out from the depths of our trunks--t-shirts and shorts and sandals--and spent the rest of our holiday holed up in Grimmauld Place complaining that our summer clothes still weren’t cool enough. All of us, that was, except for Ron. Even in the most unbearable of days, he would still insist on wearing his frayed, all-too-small Weasley jumper, the sleeves of which had grown slack from him constantly, if absently, pulling on them.

 

He hadn’t wanted us to see his scars.

 

Madam Pomfrey had sent him home that summer with a special potion. It wouldn’t make them disappear completely, she told him, but they would make the redness fade and hopefully ease his growing self-consciousness. Every day he would slather on the potion--much later, Harry would tell me that Ron did this without fail--but also every day, he would pull on the jumper with the slack sleeves, and he would suffer through the summer heat rather than let us catch even a glimpse of what he was so desperate to keep hidden.

 

I saw them once, by accident. He was coming out of the bathroom after taking a shower, clad only in a towel and assuming that everyone had gone with Molly to buy their books at Diagon Alley. The initial shock of me seeing him shirtless had paralysed both of us at first, but it soon gave way to a sobering realisation, as my eyes fell on the criss-cross of faint, red marks on his arms and it registered seconds later what they were.

 

“You’re not... I thought you’d be... Why aren’t you with Mum and Ginny??” he demanded, his tone harsher than I’d expected, probably harsher than he’d intended.

 

“McGonagall’s sending me a supplemental list, so I wanted to wait for it...”

 

I wasn’t very good at masking my horror now that I look back on it, as tears involuntarily sprung to my eyes despite my best attempts to will them away. The redness on the tips of his ears spread quickly to his cheeks, then I saw his jaw set all of a sudden, a jarring transformation from embarrassment to defiance in a matter of seconds.

 

“You think they’re ugly,” he said. It was more a statement than a question. He held up his arms, as if to offer them for full inspection. “Go on, say it. They’re bloody hideous.”

 

“No,” I said, but the word came out in barely a whisper. I still hadn’t been able to find my voice.

 

“Madam Pomfrey says they may never heal completely. I’m stuck with these damn scars for the rest of my life!”

 

I’m not sure where I got my courage in the next instant. Even years later, Ron likes to tease me about my boldness at that crucial moment, when I reached out a hand and touched his forearm, barely skimming the surface of his grooved skin. I heard him suck in a breath, felt his eyes on me as I traced one long scar in particular until it came to a stop at his wrist.

 

And really, we didn’t need words then. I looked up at him, saw his eyes glistening with unshed tears, and I reached up on my toes to kiss him on the cheek.

 

We were never the same ever since.

 

The scars did eventually fade, despite Madam Pomfrey’s initial pessimistic prognosis. You can still see them if you really stare hard, especially on those summer days when Ron gets a little pink from the sun and the faint white lines get a little more noticeable. He doesn’t mind these days, though. He doesn’t try to hide them anymore.

 

He’s proud of them, just as he’s proud of every scar he’s acquired over the years--proudest most of all of the small, lightning shaped mark on his right shoulder, where an errant spark from a terrible curse had struck him. A constant reminder of the courageous act he undertook in destroying one of Voldemort’s horcruxes.

 

He likes to point to that one in particular when I fret over him, and I tell him one more time how I wish he could be tucked away in the safest corner of the Ministry instead of fighting Dark wizards for a living. He lifts my chin with his finger and kisses my nose, and reminds me of the day I almost lost him. And he tells me if he can survive that, he can survive anything else they throw at him.

 

I have to believe that’s true.


End file.
